I attempted to write this blog article countless times but could not get beyond the first few sentences. When you have such a long history as I do with France and its culture, when you have spent so many years of your life trying to learn everything possible about the object of your desire, you feel crushed by the impossibility of the task of vividly describing all of your efforts, struggles, intimidation, and the inferiority complex you developed in the process. However, as someone who has devoted nine years of my life to obtain a PhD in French, I can no longer afford to avoid the subject of my complex and tormented relationship with France and French culture. 

It is difficult to recall the specific moment when I became so obsessed with this country and this culture. Even when I was a child I loved France, and dreamed of moving there as soon as I grew up. I probably read every single book written by French authors that was in my father’s extensive library before I had even turned twelve. I chose to major in French in college, and at the first opportunity, which happened to occur during my junior year, I went to Paris. I do not think I even had the capacity to see Paris for what it actually was, and enjoy my stay there, because I was completely blinded by the image that I had carefully and passionately crafted in my head over the years.

A few years later, I went to study at the Sorbonne University in Paris, and spent several months full of misery, most of which was self-inflicted by the haunting feeling that I will never master the French language, fully adopt French culture, and more importantly, I will never get used to French perfectionism and omnipresent criticism, which pervade nearly every interaction with French people and French institutions. I came back rather depressed and convinced that I was not suited for France and that I will never be able to be happy there. Nevertheless, I applied and was accepted to the PhD program in French at UC Berkeley. I chose to devote endless hours to studying French literature,  but unconsciously avoided returning to France, so that I would not have to endure any real interactions with French culture. I buried myself in books written by dead French people because I was afraid and intimidated by those still living.

When I cautiously decided to visit France again in 2016, I possessed a palette of various emotions: from all-consuming curiosity of how France had changed throughout the years that I had not been there, to fear of experiencing the same insecurities I felt when I was studying there. I was surprised to find France much more welcoming, friendly, warm, and modern than I remembered it. I felt it was a different place, a country I had never visited before. Is it possible, that in reality, nothing I felt towards France, from the beginning to the end, was real, but rather a mere figment of my imagination? 

Olga Sylvia, PhD